


How The Rabbit Turned Falcon

by BlackPetals4



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Aurors, Barry Allen Needs a Hug, Barry Allen is The Flash, Barry Allen is a Wizard, Barry is Hermoine's Cousin, Becoming a Superhero, Coma, Confused Barry Allen, Crossover, Episode: s10e01 The Pilot, F/M, Forensics, Gen, Hermoine Worries, MACUSA | Magical Congress of the United States of America, Magic, Meet the Family, Metahumans, Ministry of Magic, Patronus, Pre-Particle Accelerator Explosion (The Flash TV 2014), Two-Shot, Unrequited Love, forensic scientist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 10:04:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19990333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackPetals4/pseuds/BlackPetals4
Summary: During Barry's nine-months long coma, Hermoine worries. When they finally meet again, he has a lot of suprises in store for her. If he even gets to tell her in the chaos of meeting the colorful assembly that is her closest friends and family.





	How The Rabbit Turned Falcon

**Author's Note:**

> Here, have another cracky crossover from me! I just loved the idea of Barry being a wizard and struggling to balance three different lives, two of them a secret, and dealing with the strange effects of the lightning strike on his magic. Poor boy! But fear not, Hermoine is here!  
> If you feel like it, comments are appreciated.  
> Have fun!

Hermione Granger was furious. Her only cousin, with whom she had thought to have a close relationship with – platonic, of course – hadn’t called her in nine months. Not only that, but he ignored all her attempts to contact him as well. Hermione didn’t have Barry’s foster-father or foster-sister’s number, much to her dismay. Maybe her anger only served to conceal the hurt she was feeling, how Barry had seemingly forgotten about her and didn’t bother to even write a short message of ‘ _How have you been since my last visit? I’m doing fine_ ’ or something similar, like he always did when he had a very busy week at work.

They had been as close as siblings when they were little as they were nearly the same age –him being a few months older than her – and had similar interests that hadn’t changed much since back then. Both of them had an unsatisfiable curiosity no one managed to quell, their peers sure tried and failed throughout preschool. On top of their class and always reading more than required, the two of them were soon ahead with the curriculum. It made their parents proud and they would encourage them to be themselves and enjoy doing whatever caught their interest next. However, with that came the inevitable separation from other children their age. They felt more mature than them already and had little interest in playing the games natural for their age or participating in the unintelligent conversations with people who ridiculed them for their need to learn, to gain knowledge. Despite their parent’s best efforts in trying to get them to socialize and connect to their peers, they stuck to each other. Of course, it didn’t take too long for bullies to emerge and make their debut at a young age. After that, they watched the other’s back even more.

All of that had happened before her cousin’s family had moved to America, where he lived now. He came to visit her many times over the years and whilst going to school on America, Barry had helped her with everything going on here in Britain. The year following his mother’s murder and his father’s wrongful imprisonment were the hardest so far. Nothing seemed to work in getting Barry out of the hole he had fallen into. He had seen the impossible and no one believed him. Hermione did her best in trying to search for a logical explanation for the ‘man in yellow’, but it was all for naught and she couldn’t honestly say she believed his version of that fateful night completely. When they had found out that the wizarding world existed, they had been even more excited that they both had a place in it, nobody would be left behind. Impossible was a word they hardly used anymore, and Barry searched for a magical explanation for his mother’s murder. Their topics of conversation had changed drastically after their introduction to magic. Whilst she was amassing knowledge of any kind at an alarming rate, he took apart every law and principle he learned scientifically and picked out the topics he found interesting.

During the war, while she had been forced to tour the country, he had come to help at great personal risk. This was something she could have never asked him to do, yet he escorted some muggle-borns and their families out of the country, helping them to get to the States by legal means. Had he been caught by Death-Eaters, it would have meant sure death for him. He had looked after her parents for a bit after she had shipped them to safety in Australia, leaving them without any memory of their daughter. Her cousin was the one she had talked the most to about her feelings for Ron, the war and its aftermath. She was leaving the rest of her family mostly out of it for different reasons, first and foremost being that she simply didn’t want them to worry about her. She didn’t think they would really understand her either.

He, on the other hand, had finished his schooling at the Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry just before Harry, Ron and she had to take their unexpected trip across the Isles and had seen the war with his own eyes. That meant he would understand the horrors she had lived through and she didn’t have to worry about censoring what she was saying. Talking openly with someone about everything had helped Hermione a lot to cope and to heal. Therapists were right; she decided for herself, it always lifted some invisible weight off her shoulders. Now she would only have to convince Harry to try it out – _that_ would help her too, and prevent some of the situations he got himself into…

The feeling was mutual it seemed, as her cousin entrusted her with his thoughts and problems too. Unfortunately for him, Ilvermorny had bullies like any normal school; they just had a bigger repertoire to be creative. Magic could create as many problems as it solved. 

Thanks to Barry’s support she had shoved her doubts aside and applied for a position in the ministry, at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures to be exact, after graduating from Hogwarts one year late. She had wanted to change the blatant discrimination against magical beings into treating each other with the deserved respect. Beating some sense into those ruthless politicians took quite some time, more than she had anticipated. Right now, she was thinking about leaving the department for the DMLE, the magical law enforcement division of the Ministry. Starting over would do her good, she missed to fight actual battles rather than political ones. She was twenty-four now and would turn twenty-five in September, it was July now. Her cousin had turned twenty-five in March already and she had missed it. A surprise visit to Central City would have been impossible that month, as they were passing an important decree and working on getting another one through the Wizengamot at the same time. Barry’s birthday present was too heavy to send by owl, so she still had it lying inside a closet in the bedroom.

The next time he came for a visit she would make him stay more than a couple of days, because underneath the anger and hurt still laid deep worry for her cousin. Not contacting her for such a long time was out of character for him. What if something had happened to him she didn’t know about? Her mind generously supplied her with many way too detailed pictures containing horrible scenarios why he could be unable to call her. Merlin, he would never shut her out intentionally, she knew that, so why was she still angry?

Hermione’s brow crinkled. Her anxiety drew hard lines on her face as she set her phone on the drawer next to her bed. In America, they had so-called techno-mages who worked on combining technology with magic, improving it and creating new forms of technology with it. Ilvermorny taught the most basic protections for living amongst muggles safely and undetected. It was, after all, important to avoid any suspicion for not using a cellphone or a computer. Nowadays, everybody and their grandmother were using those useful gadgets. Hermione had long given up hope for the British wizarding-world to catch up with those advancements in the muggle world; the gap between the worlds was growing bigger every year and would soon be unbridgeable. The British community was different from the American one in that aspect. At their schools of magic, they taught wizarding as well as muggle – or no-majes, as they called it – culture, constantly updating the lessons and their own advancements. The reason behind it wasn’t what one would expect though. The American government was simply more paranoid and felt the need to keep track of what the no-maj – Hermione liked that term better, it sounded less offensive – were doing to protect their society better. Well, and because they saw the potential power the no-majes held and how they could use it.

Being the adorkable nerd he was, Barry had taken advanced courses in mixing his magic and technology so he wouldn’t have any problems going to a mundane university to study forensic science parallel to the magical version of his course studies. In the U.S.A. a few majes had two occupations. One in the mundane world and one their coworkers there had no idea about. Those who were allowed to hold two jobs with one of them in the mundane world had to have permission from the government to do so and permission was only given for occupations that would be useful to the Congress and the magical world as a whole. Not too long ago, Rappaport’s Law of Separation between majes and no-majes had been softened a bit. Before, the two had not been allowed to have relationships with the no-majes. The two worlds had been kept even stricter apart than what the British Ministry enforced in her country. Now, you were allowed to mix, but breaching the Statute of Secrecy by telling the muggle had to wait until engagement at least and the muggle had to register at the MACUSA afterwards. Like in Britain, the Ministry was one of the main employees in the magical world; it was called MACUSA, as in Magical Congress. The MACUSA was completely independent from their non-magical counterpart. No wonder that Barry worked for their version of the DMLE then too, the FEDAF – Federal Auror Forces – as a forensic, helping the aurors on their cases. It wasn’t that different from his normal job as a CSI in Central City and he could apparate or fire-travel to his other office on a moment’s notice. His job was important for another reason: Some criminals of the wizarding world didn’t care for keeping the Statute of Secrecy and the MACUSA needed wizards like Barry to keep the muggles from noticing anything strange at crime scenes, sometimes he had to oblivate a witness or two and hand his evidence over to the FEDAF. It was hard work, but he did a lot of good. Hermoine sighed quietly, wishing for at least a life-sign from Barry.

To her great embarrassment and everlasting denial, she jumped about two feet from her bed and let out a squeak when the phone on her bedside table suddenly started ringing. She calmed her racing heart and quickly reached for the device, checking the caller-ID first. It was Barry! Without further ado, she pressed the accept-button on her touchscreen, gearing up for a long rant about dropping off the face of the earth for nine months. But before she could get out a single word of her accusations he pulled ahead of her.

“Hermoine! Its me, Barry. I mean, you know that, I’m calling you from my phone, but…anyways, I’m so glad to reach you.” His rambling trailed off at the end, a noticeable quiver in his voice distracted her from the speech she had previously prepared.

“Barry, I’m so glad to hear from you! You sound upset. What on earth happened?!”, she barely stopped herself from raising her voice to scream at him.

“Its, uh…I’m sorry, you didn’t even know? I thought someone called you, but it must have slipped their minds somehow…”, he started, apologetic yet confused. The nervous edge had not yet faded.

“No, I only know that you didn’t call for nine months, and I had no idea if you were even still alive!”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry! ‘Moine, this is going to be a shock no matter how I say it, so I’ll just say it. I’ve been in coma all this time.”

Someone had just emptied a bucket of ice-water over her head. Her whole body felt numb, she had to grip her headboard to steady herself. Her cousin told her he had been in a serious medical condition for nine months, in danger of dying even. She wasn’t ready to lose him. Not now, not ever.

“You…what! Oh my God, Barry! Are you okay? What happened?!”

“I’m fine now. I woke up two days ago and I have no problems so far. It’s weird, I feel fitter than before, actually. My condition doesn’t match at all what a long-term coma patient should be like upon waking-” She could picture his puzzled expression all too well. For her part, she didn’t care that he didn’t confirm to the norm in this case. “-You won’t believe what happened. I was struck by lightning!”

What.

“Yeah, I know, this is insane! Do you know how small the odds of that happening even are?”

“Exorbitantly small, I guess…”, she murmured distractedly, “But Barry, how did you get struck by lightning?”

This had to be a strange dream. She had laid down in her bed and accidentally fallen asleep while waiting for Ron to come home. All the possible reasons on her list had not remotely included ‘ _struck by lightning’_ , and the list had been a long and increasingly absurd one.

“There was a small storm outside that night, and I wanted to close the skylight in the lab. Then I saw the particle accelerator from STAR-Labs exploding. You must have read something in the newspapers or heard it on TV, the clouds got charged up and all that energy had to go somewhere. It formed a flash, and well, it chose me to strike.”

“That’s…that sounds like the beginning of a weird novel.”, Hermoine didn’t know what to say to the craziness that apparently was Barry’s life.

She had, in fact, read something about the tragedy in the newspaper, but had dismissed it at the time. Many people got hurt or even died, but tragedies happened all the time around the world and she hadn’t connected it to Barry. Funny, how fast that could change. The remote freak occurrence suddenly felt much closer, much more important. She should have known Barry’s sudden radio-silence had something to do with the explosion, he lived in the same city.

“I’m just glad you are okay! Did they at least pay for your stay at the hospital? The cost for spending nine whole months there must be outrageous.”, she worried.

“They did pay for it. Even more, they took care of me themselves. One of their doctors, Caitlin Snow, looked after me with the newest and best equipment available. It was partially because…uh…the hospital wanted to give up on me, since I flatlined multiple times…”, his voice got smaller at the end, hesitating to worry her even more.

Hermoine felt like crying. They wanted to give up on her cousin. He could have died, almost did die multiple times, and she had no idea. She felt so stupid for feeling angry at him in the first place while he had fought for his life and suffered.

“Oh Barry!”, she sniffed, “I…I’m so relieved you are alive! I can’t even say…”

“Yeah, I was scared too when they told me.”, his voice wavered slightly, “It’s strange, how fast your life could be over…and now I’m unsure how to continue. Most things are still the same, but there are some differences that seem so sudden to me, like I looked away for a second and suddenly there is a new store where I used to buy my coffee. My workplaces, I will have to make up for all that lost time somehow. And Iris…”

“What about her?”, Hermoine asked gently.

She couldn’t even imagine how Barry felt. To wake up in a world where nine months had gone by without him. It must feel like living in a fake model, just slightly off from the original. Him being the only piece of the puzzle that didn’t quite fit in anymore. What a horrible thought. She hoped he would adapt without too much trouble and his bosses wouldn’t blame him for something he couldn’t control or deem him unfit to continue working. That would be Barry’s worst nightmare, he loved his work and he needed it continue searching for his mother’s killer.

“Iris has a boyfriend. His name is Eddie, he is a cop and Joe’s partner. I only met him briefly before my nine-month nap and back then Iris didn’t really like him. And now I saw them kissing and flirting. Iris asked me not to tell Joe.”

Oh no, this was perhaps worse than losing his jobs. It was a matter of the heart. Hermoine was terrible with those, but she had seen the obvious love Barry held for Iris West. A love that was definitely not a brotherly one. She would have to be blind not to see it, she didn’t know how Iris could be so selectively blind. But then again, maybe she had seen it and chosen not to acknowledge it. Or she hadn’t wanted to wait for a man who might have never woken up again. Live had moved on without Barry and so had she. There had still been an undeniable chemistry between the two when Hermoine had last seen them though.

“Barry, I’m sorry to hear that. I know you like her too. It must be difficult to see them together. I wish I could hug you.”

“Its fine, she’s happy. That matters more than my own feelings on that matter. I just wish I hadn’t slept my chance away.” He was such a sweet guy, always putting others before himself. “If you want to hug me so badly though, that could be arranged.”

“You want to visit?”, she asked excitedly.

“Yes, if you will have me. Then we could really talk. There is still so much I have to tell you!”, here his voice took a serious note before lightening again, “I haven’t even gotten around to ask you how you are faring?”

“Of course, Barry! Just tell me when. And I’m doing well, thanks for asking. Ron and I are thinking about renovating our living room and I’m still working at the ministry. I’m considering a transfer to the DMLE.”

“Since I’m still not cleared for work this week would be the best time if it isn’t to sudden.”, he said, a smile evident in his tone. “You would make a great auror, I know you would have absolutely no problems. They would be ecstatic to have you, especially with your reputation.”

Hermoine blushed a little, embarrassed at the barrage of enthusiastic compliments. “Ron says the same. I will ask him if he finally wants to meet you and then we’ll file a request at the Department of Magical Transportation for an international portkey or a temporary floo-connection to your place. Which medium do you like better?”

“The floo I think, we could apply for a semi-permanent connection too, if you want to? I want to see your parents and Ron again as well. I haven’t seen them in so long. And I finally want to meet your best friends, I still haven’t met Harry and you talk about him so much.”

“That’s a wonderful idea! I’ll ask them if they want to come over too. How about a large family lunch on Wednesday?”, she grinned.

“Sounds perfect!”

They continued talking for over an hour about the most mundane topics, simply enjoying hearing each other’s voice again after all this time. Ranging from who how long he would stay, what they would cook on Wednesday and how they needed a password for the floo-connection, to Hermoine’s work for improving the status of magical beings and the news in Britain, they talked until their throats felt dry and scratchy. She finally had to go when Ron came home from work but promised to call as soon as the application for the floo-connection got through. After she ended the call, her heart felt lighter than it had before. Yet, she still worried about his health. About his mental and emotional state. About everything he hadn’t wanted to tell her over the phone, for it was clear that there were things he had purposefully left out for now. He had at least left her a clear forewarning that he needed to talk to her in person about something serious. Sighing once more, she put down her phone on the drawer and went to the kitchen to greet Ron. There was a lot to tell her family.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I hope you liked it. If you've seen any mistakes, please tell me so I can correct them and make the reading experience even more enjoyable for the next readers.  
> Thanks for reading my story!  
> Love,  
> Petals


End file.
